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Party Time

The American political party duopoly is a curious thing. Every other modern democratically run state has multiple political parties that freely compete for votes in order to establish their representative share of the people’s voice within the government. But that’s not the case in America; here we have two parties that share total control of the state apparatus on a semi-regular seesawing 8-year cycle. The curious thing is that no one questions why this would be? Is it that in other countries there are four, five, or six different more nuanced mixtures of political opinion but somehow when you cross the American border human minds undergo a transformation that imparts upon them the capacity to only hold allegiance to one of two political mindsets?

As you might have guessed there is no magic involved at all. Wherever you find constrained or limited options you will find government pulling the strings from behind black cloth. Political parties are not institutions established by the constitution. Indeed they are not necessary at all for our government to operate. Political parties are private institutions, businesses really, and are the product of the natural tendency of people with similar views to work together for common cause. That is all perfectly fine. The problem occurred over time. Whenever one party gained control, they would pass laws (erect barriers) making it that much harder for opposing parties to gain access to the ballot box. If your opponents can’t get their name on the ballot that tends to increase the likelihood you will remain in office.

Simultaneously they made the process of their campaigning that much easier by passing laws (providing assistance) that authorized the government to use public resources to assist with internal party business (i.e. nominating primaries) thereby supporting the illusion that party business is really state business. That is to say, these private businesses (Democrat Party™ and Republican Party™) have the cojones to get the public to pay for their private primary elections that ultimately are entirely pointless, as it is the party delegates that decide the nominee, not the voter. This process is merely an insidious trick to dupe the people into feeling as though they have a voice in the process so that they come to view the primary process as party of “democracy” when it is nothing more than a privately run, and publicly paid for, straw poll. This process has gone on so long that most people are unaware of the distinction and simply view the “primaries” as part of the normal political process of electing someone to office. They are not. They are private events held in public, paid for by that public, masquerading as democracy in action.

These political parties care not one wit about your vote or what you think. Because they are both private organizations they can ultimately pick whomever they want to be the nominee. They prefer to have the blessing of the voters upon their anointed candidate in order to give the people the illusion of choice. People are more easily controlled if they feel like they have some control of their life – if they feel like they have a choice, even the illusion of choice, they will accept a result even if they do not agree with it.

Duopoly control is further assured since most elections do not require the winner obtain a majority of the vote if by some miracle a third candidate appears on the ballot. This rules out runoff elections, which afford voters the ability to rank their choices. The deck is then further stacked against the third party candidate as people make a pragmatic rather than a principled choice to ensure the “most evil” candidate does not win

Political parties have co-opted the authority of government in order to ensure their continued stranglehold on power in this country. This is not democracy. This is not freedom. False choice is not real choice. We laugh at countries with only one name on the ballot and yet somehow only two names on the ballot seems perfectly reasonable. If you truly believe in democracy then you must demand the people be free to choose from all options. Every flavor of ballot access laws should be repealed, campaigning on the ballot (D or R next to the name) should be banned, all winners must have a majority decided through instant runoff style elections, and the Democrat and Republican parties should either have private nominating conventions or pay for their own public elections.